Whether you’re
a fan of shrimp cocktail or have given up
drinking shellfish entirely, you may have noticed that our fishy things are
starting to cost more. All because of a silly, untapped underwater oil gusher
that’s put a crimp in local fishing and, depending on which websites you’re
visiting, doomed the planet. And in the face of this catfish emergency, big
business as usual is driving the agenda. Yes, I’m talking about those soulless,
money-grubbing, profit-gouging… fishermen.

Despite what you’d like to believe
from watching entertainment like Deadliest Catch, A Perfect Storm and SpongeBob
Squarepants – that fishermen are industrious salty-faced brutes
working under conditions that would crush the soul of a dweller in the ninth circle
of hell – the U.S. Commercial Fishing Industry is no mom-and-pop used bait shack buta
$4 billion business, with more than half of that coming from the Gulf
Coast (motto: “In your face, rest of fishing industry!”). And these collective billionaire
crybabies have got their
waders in a bunch over a little oil spill barely the size of one of our
smaller states. (For now.)

First, the local seafood industry
expects the owners of the no-longer-off-shore rig, British Petroleum – whose 2010
first quarter profits were up 85% from last year to nearly $5 billion – to
clean up the mess, at a cost, according to Barclay’s ascot-sporting investment
bankers, of$1
billion over the next ten months. These same irate local
fishermen – with literally nothing better to do as a result of a federal
fishing ban across four states – also expect tougher drilling regulations on
the already beleaguered oil industry, whose 2009 profits “slumped” after a
record decade-long haul by the big five oil companies totaling nearly three-quarters
of a trillion dollars. And now, the final indignity: a movement is afoot to
put poor BP Oil on the hook for future losses to fishing, tourism, wildlife,
and the sale of souvenir shot glasses expected to total billions of dollars. Finally,
sir, have you left no sense of decency?

But while the negative impact of
the oil spill is expected to be felt for decades, BP Oil remains haughty and
unflappable… and not just because they’re British: no matter how horrific
things get – up to and including the release of an undersea monster not seen
since prehistoric times or 1955’s It Came From Beneath The Sea – current
federal law actually caps their liability for economic
damages at $75 million.

Let’s put a $75 million dollar
fine in “perspective,” or as I like to think of it, a way of looking at
something that causes a sense of nausea: way back in 2008 when Exxon
reported the largest annual profit in U.S. history, the company was taking
in revenue of roughly $85 billion in a single quarter. That’s nearly one billion
dollars per day, or an hourly wage of
about $40 million. Now imagine any other industry – say, fishing – for whom
the worst possible fine, no matter how much damage they wreaked, could only cost them… two hour’s pay. In the
frenzy to fill their boats with scaly, flapping profits, the seas would boil, wine turn sour, dogs grow mad, and all
creatures become languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and
phrensies, whatever that last one is.

All of which goes a long way to explaining why oil companies seem to act with
a winning combination of disregard and impunity, like an NFL quarterback. But you might still be asking yourself, if
you were
prone to anguished yearning for things to make sense, How can a trillion-dollar industry's liability be limited to roughly
what a singlecompany earns in a few hours? Because of Congressional legislation passed in the
wake of the Exxon Valdez tanker
grounding, when nothing was more important than protecting oil companies from
suffering losses that might impede their ability to spill vast quantities of
oil on their way to accumulating the wealth of the universe. (In an amusingly
appalling side note, Exxon, in order to protect itself against a looming
punitive judgment in the Valdez case, obtained
a $4.8 billion credit line from J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1994 – the first modern credit default swap, the unholy
bastard spawn of the oil and banking industries, born, like Damian, to bring
ruin upon reaching adolescence.)

But even that $75 million pittance is too much for
Transocean, owners of the sunken rig. In a bold legal move once favored by 19th
century pirates, Transocean has cited an obscure
1851 maritime law limiting its liability to the "post-accident value of its vessel
and cargo”: $27 million, or less than one quarter of one-percent of 2009 revenues. It makes one yearn to be pillaged and raped by
actual pirates.

So enjoy that shrimp cocktail, and remember that fish oil is supposed to be
good for you. As for the billionaire fishmongers of the Gulf Coast, they can only lick their oily wounds, and heed the words
of another smug Brit, fifteenth-century poet Alexander Barclay, who observed, "The great fish eat the small."

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accurate, "Eat The Poor" also contains elements of parody, including exaggeration and ridicule, regarding events, public figures,
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